Of Mice And Men

Director Iain Sinclair is no stranger to mounting challenging work, having staged many plays evoking what he styles “the Great American Emptiness”. What is most striking within his latest production, however – an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice And Men – is the universality of the tragedy, and that so much of what was penned in the 1930s still rings true today.

“Not much has changed, unfortunately, since Steinbeck wrote it,” Sinclair explains. He is a jovial speaker, although it is very clear that he takes his subject matter seriously.

“On Netflix right now there’s a documentary called The Overnighters, which documents the plight of American men who are all headed up to North Dakota at the moment to chase the coal trails. And that documentary, which was made I think last year, shows single men out on the farm, spending their last wages to get a bus ticket, and arriving in these towns to knock on doors only to find there aren’t enough jobs for the amount of people turning up. That’s happening right now in the United States, and it’s an exact mirror of Steinbeck’s story.

“I think Steinbeck very presciently spotted the hard bone end of capitalism, and what happens when it doesn’t turn out right, what that does to people. That has continued on for the past century, and you look at places like Detroit now, which are the logical extension of what Steinbeck was warning us about. In a way, Of Mice And Men is a premonition of the post-America which we see today.”

In part, the novella addresses how gradually the individual is corrupted by larger forces beyond their control – environmental, governmental, economic – and how easy it is to become complicit in others’ hardship. Even a cursory glance at society today reveals this lack of empathy, this somewhat hollow cynicism of contemporary life, and we are now over 70 years since Steinbeck first published his story of abuse and loneliness. The parallels are certainly not lost on Sinclair.

“There’s so much in the play that talks about that gradual growth towards meanness, and it’s a meanness that comes out of necessity, in a way. The play just hums with loneliness. We meet the characters often at their best, but they each have a very specific kind of solitariness that has come from having to be a little bit more selfish as times get tougher.

“In a way, I don’t feel the need to push the themes very hard at all. Steinbeck is such a clean, simple, strong writer, that what he put out in 1937 harmonises with the loneliness we feel in the city now as things are getting tougher. That general worry we have about how mean society is growing, and that our care for people in trouble diminishes and diminishes as we look to ourselves more and more. It’s unfortunate, but what he wrote back then is alive and well today.”

While he is helming this production as director, Sinclair has a much-lauded history as a dramaturge (and enquiring minds can find his splendid essay on the subject, Some Notes On The Text, online). Yet coming to Of Mice And Men, he found his skills in script development and interpretation largely unnecessary. Steinbeck’s writing proved so clean, even after all this time, that the story often took care of itself; the trick instead was to provide space for these themes to breathe.

“This adaptation is by Steinbeck himself, which is interesting,” says Sinclair. “Sometimes when novelists make the transition to adapt their own stories, it doesn’t always work. But Steinbeck really knows drama; his adaptation is almost filmic. Pretty much everything that’s said in the book is said in the play. So much of the novella is already dialogue-driven, and his writing is so particular, there’s not much need to colour anything in.

“I’ll give you a really good example of just how efficient he is. Curley, who’s the boss’ son and causes all of this trouble, is presented as a wrong’un, a source of trouble. The way Steinbeck lets us know that there’s just something skewiff with him is that he gives him one glove full of Vaseline, and one character mentions that he wears it to keep his hand soft for his lady. That’s all you need to say, and every time that character walks onstage, you see the glove and you think, ‘There’s just something horrible about that guy.’ It’s so efficient, it’s so lean, and that’s the joy of doing Steinbeck.

“I think we elaborate on his efficiency at our peril, in a way. The first thing we did was go through and make sure we were being absolutely clear to what Steinbeck wanted, in the knowledge that a great deal about Steinbeck is struggle. What we’re discovering as we go through is that the closest we stay to the simplicity of his symbols and dramatic action, the better the story works. It makes me realise how often we overstate things in theatre, whereas this is really an exercise in efficiency.”